Unless your calendar notes important occurrences or observations, you might not be aware that the sesquicentennial commemoration of the American Civil War is upon us.
Some observers may have marked the start of the observance with the 150th Anniversary last year of John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry in October 1859. Others use the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 as their benchmark.
Both milestones would be appropriate.
But between those two dates occurred what could be best described as America’s Twilight Zone – a period when the federal government was absolutely powerless.
The United States came close to unraveling without so much as a shot being fired. What’s more, no one could have stopped its dissolution. The ramifications that would have had for the future of the world would have been unimaginable.
The administration of James Buchanan arguably represented the weakest Presidency in our history. He did little or nothing to bring the opposing factions, North and South, together. Proactive was not a word in his vocabulary.
His failure to intercede and restore some semblance of control at the federal level all but assured the fragmentation of political parties that led to the divided result in the Presidential Election of 1860.
Upon taking the oath of office in March 1861, there was almost nothing Lincoln could do to reassemble the union. Seven states had already seceded, with South Carolina leading the way in December 1860. There was no desire for any of the seven to return under any conditions.
The United States Supreme Court was not asked to opine. It would have been unlikely any good would have come from it given the court’s previous pro-slavery ruling on the Dred Scott case and Chief Justice Roger Taney being a slaveholder.
How powerless was the government?
Consider this: the Army’s commanding general in charge of troops in Texas, handed over all posts to that state’s government and arranged for the evacuation of all federal troops without authority from Washington. Although he was dishonorably discharged a couple of weeks later, it was a case of too little, too late. The general was David Twiggs who went on to serve in the Confederate States Army.
There was a little irony in the early months of secession – the United States Post Office continued to deliver the mail throughout the seven former states until the Confederate States established its own postal service in February 1861, so we can add secession to snow, sleet or hail.
Lincoln would have done anything to save the Union and was on record as saying he would not interfere with slavery where it existed under the current laws.
Although slavery was the core issue behind the Civil War, many Americans in the northern states were sadly ambivalent about it. Many northerners did not want slavery in their own states, but did not care if it existed in the south. In some regions, there was fear that freed slaves would compete for jobs.
Abolitionists were in the minority. Lincoln was not an abolitionist. If anything, his views on slavery may have been a little closer to Robert E. Lee’s than to Salmon P. Chase‘s, his rival for the Republican nomination . Lincoln’s view of slavery evolved after the war started to the point where he positioned the conflict as a fight for freedom.
Indeed, society in those days was not enlightened. It is a paradox that while we waged a war to free slaves, the United States continued its policy of genocide against native Americans.
The federal government’s lack of resolve would have been the end of a United States had it continued. The Army was too small to interfere, and at least a third of its officer corp were southerners, many of whom resigned their commissions as their states withdrew from the Union. Had Lincoln called for volunteers, almost all of the upper south, consisting of Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland would have bolted rather than support what they would have perceived to be an invasion force – one that would have to march through their lands to reach the disaffected states of the deep south.
Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place, but that is where Lincoln was wedged.
So what did he do?
Other than keep the door open for the return of the seven states with a promise not to end slavery, he did almost nothing. As it turned out, that was the smartest course of action.
Lincoln’s patience won out over the Confederacy’s impatience. By firing on Fort Sumter, the South aroused the passions of the North as no other issue could, including slavery.
Although the commencement of hostilities did drive Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina to secede, the other border states remained largely loyal to the Union and served as valuable springboards for the invasion of the Confederacy. It’s worth noting that Kentucky and Missouri were represented in the Congresses of both sides, but the impact was insignificant in the South’s prosecution of the war.
You might say the Nation dodged a bullet by firing bullets. Had the South been content with letting Fort Sumter wither on the vine, it is likely the North would have acquiesced. America would have devolved into two nations, and perhaps fractured even further. A precedent would have been set for other states to secede – California and the rest of the southwest may have formed yet another country in time. There were a sizeable number of southern sympathizers in Southern California in 1861.
The world is a better place because the United States remained united. It is difficult to imagine how the world could have dealt with the challenges and epic upheavals caused by World Wars One and Two without the full weight of a nation as dynamic and resourceful as the one we know today.
Think about that this July 4th.
Insightful article
Although revisionist history is always hard to justify you could make the case that if the USA was fragmented as a result of having avoided a civil war, Germany may have triumphed in WWI.
But that may have avoided WWII with all its horrors and aftermath.
The development of the nuclear weapons may have been delayed by many decades if developed at all. Also of course there would not have been a cold war with the USSR.
The Military Industrial (and Congressional Complex as Ike originally wanted to call) would not likely have developed as virulently as it has.
The USA did not want to ever be caught off guard and have to play catch up as the shooting started.
It certainly would have been a real gamechanger as you indicated. Good point you made about WW2. If Germany had won WW1, the Holocaust and WW2 may never have occurred.
Even if Germany had not won WWI but had negotiated better armistice terms the rise of Hitler, usually ascribed as a result of the humiliating terms of the armistice imposed on Germany after WWI, may not have occurred. It is reasonable to assume that if the USA of 1917 did not exist, than the “Americas” diminished wealth and resources might not have proven so decisive in turning the war around for the depleted allies. Ergo no Hitler, no WWII, wait a minute what about Japan, hmm maybe war was inevitable. Probably on a small scale and without the development of nuclear weapons.
I believe that history, that is to say life is a random walk. There is no fate other than the choices we make and there consequences are ultimately unknown. History could have taken many different paths. We are just living particular one.
I think that we would have nuclear weapons. From wiki:
“The first fission weapons, also known as “atomic bombs,” were developed jointly by the United States, Britain and Canada during World War II in what was called the Manhattan Project to counter the assumed Nazi German atomic bomb project.”
The Germans – Von Braun – was working on both missile and rocket technology. Von Braun surrendered during WW II with some of his chief scientists. Von Braun and his friends came to the United States. Later, Von Braun would head NASA. Von Braun was at our Santa Susana Field Lab, and he oversaw (from a distance) many projects that were developed here.
From wiki:
“Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr[1] von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German-American rocket scientist, astronautics engineer and space architect, becoming one of the leading figures in the creation of rocket technology in Germany and the United States. He was a member of the Nazi party and a commissioned SS officer. Wernher von Braun was said to be the preeminent rocket engineer of the 20th century.[2]
In his 20s and early 30s, von Braun was the central figure in Germany’s pre-war rocket development programme, responsible for the design and realization of the deadly V-2 combat rocket during World War II. After the war, he and some of his rocket team were taken to the United States as part of the then-secret Operation Paperclip. In 1955, ten years after entering the country, von Braun became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Von Braun worked on the US Army intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) program before his group was assimilated by NASA, under which he served as director of the newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center and as the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon.[3] According to one NASA source, he is “without doubt, the greatest rocket scientist in history. His crowning achievement … was to lead the development of the Saturn V booster rocket that helped land the first men on the Moon in July 1969.”[4] He received the 1975 National Medal of Science.”
From Von Braun:
“Saturn the Giant by Wernher von Braun”
“North American had been involved in the development of liquid fuel rocket engines since the immediate postwar years and the Navajo long range ramjet program. The engines it developed for the Navajo booster and their offspring later found their way into the Atlas, Redstone, Thor, and Jupiter programs. For the testing of these engines NAA’s Rocketdyne Division had acquired a boulder-strewn area high in the Santa Susana mountains, north of Los Angeles, that had previously served as rugged background for many a Western movie. The Santa Susana facility would henceforth serve not only for the development of the new J-2 engine, but also for short duration “battleship” testing of the five-engine cluster of these engines powering the S-II stage. (Safety and noise considerations ruled out the use of Santa Susana for the 1.5-million-pound-thrust F-1 engine. Test stands for its development were therefore set up in the Mojave desert, adjacent to Edwards Air Force Base.) ”
Many of our best scientists in the United States have been Germans.
In reality, look where we are today. We helped to rebuild Germany. We helped to rebuild Japan. We keep helping other nations. Now, China owns our debt because of our protracted wars in the Middle East.
Paul, you are the CPA, how are we ever going to get out from under that debt?
And by the way, I was just thinking about Lincoln and Douglas the other day. I was looking at where Lincoln gave his speaches.
I’m from Northern Illinois – here is a story about what Lincoln said in Galena, Illinois:
“Lincoln’s Galena Speech
When Lincoln spoke the evening of July 23, 1856, a local paper noted that he “had a large audience, and addressed them until nearly 11 o’clock. He spoke from the balcony of the De Soto House, and a number of ladies, within the House and in rooms across the street, were among his attentive listeners.”
Lincoln’s speech has not been preserved in its entirety, but a newspaper summary described it as being on “Disunion.” He addressed his remarks to the opponents of Fremont and the Republican Party. He said, “If you mean that it is our aim to dissolve the Union, for myself I answer, that is untrue; for those who act with me I answer, that it is untrue.” He explained that the Republican position resisting the expansion of slavery was not devisive. “All this talk about the dissolution of the Union is humbug — nothing but folly. We WON’T dissolve the Union, and you SHAN’T,” he concluded.
The paper also described Lincoln as a speaker: “His manner is neither fanciful nor rhetorical, but logical. His thoughts are strong thoughts, and are strongly joined together. He is a close reasoner, and has the faculty of making himself clearly understood. He does not leave a vague impression that he had said something worth hearing; the hearer remembers what that something is. The sledge hammer effect of his speech results from the resistless force of the logic of the logician, not the fierce gestures and loud rantings of the demagogue.”
I think that this last paragraph is worth thinking about.
You still do not make the case for the inevitable 20th Century development of the bomb.
That project was the most expensive in history. Einstein only urged FDR to do it because he thought the Nazis might. No Nazis – No bomb — very likely.
Michael,
I don’t know how you can say that if the outcome of WW I was different, that you could have prevented Nazis and antisemitism.
Isn’t that what we are still dealing with today – nuclear weapons (Middle East, India, Pakistan, China, Russia, North Korea), and antisemitism (Middle East, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere)?
Von Braun would have still been a scientist in Germany. And he still would have had his dreams of going into space.
The bottom line is – we can’t change the past. Maybe we can affect our future.
The Nazi party began before WW I was over.
See wiki:
“The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (help·info), abbreviated NSDAP), commonly known in English as the Nazi Party (from the Ger. pronunciation of Nationalsozialist[1]), was a political party in Germany between 1919 and 1945. It was known as the German Workers’ Party (DAP) prior to a change of name in 1920.
The party’s last leader, Adolf Hitler, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by president Paul von Hindenburg in 1933. Hitler rapidly established a totalitarian regime[2][3][4][5] known as the Third Reich.”
Wiki:
“World War I was a military conflict centered on Europe that began in the summer of 1914. The fighting ended in late 1918 in western Europe and by 1922 in eastern Europe. This conflict involved most of the world’s great powers,[1] assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (centred around the Triple Entente) and the Central Powers.[2] More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history.[3][4] More than 15 million people were killed, making it also one of the deadliest conflicts in history.[5] The war is also known as the First World War, the Great War, the World War (prior to the outbreak of World War II), and the War to End All Wars”
Wiki:
“The Manhattan Project was the codename for a project conducted during World War II to develop the first atomic bombs. The project was led by the United States, and included participation from the United Kingdom and Canada. Formally designated as the Manhattan Engineer District (MED) (sometimes referred to as the Manhattan District) it refers specifically to the period of the project from 1942–1946 under the control of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and General Leslie R. Groves. The scientific research was directed by American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.[1]
The project’s roots began in the 1930s, with scientists’ fears of Nazi Germany trying to develop nuclear weapons. The Manhattan Project began as a small research program in 1939, which eventually employed more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion ($22 billion in present day value). It resulted in the creation of several research and production sites whose construction and operations were secret.[2]”
They had the Nazi Party in Germany since 1919. I am not defending the creation of those weapons or the decision to employ them. Today, our weapons act as a deterrent. Would I like to see them gone – yes. Do I think we will ever get rid of them all – no. And one of the problems is – where do you put the hazardous materials from nuclear weapons in perpetuity? We have lost Yucca Mountain. We have no permanant high level waste repository in the United States.
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